Look at those faces on the album cover, faces only a mother could love. But the music is really not that bad. This album has pretentions to being something better than A-ha, for example, and it manages to be that. It is more adult, less reliant on novelty value, all-around better pop.

It is in those pretentions, however that the album has its downfall. The lyrics try to be quite smart but they don't have much more to say than you could find in a new-agey pocket book of the week. Primal Scream is good, Greed is wrong... it just becomes annoying.

All that aside, however the songs are very competent pop indeed, they are composed in actually pretty complex ways, now that you look at them removed from the context of the 80's. This is an album which is now starting to be reapreciated, and it deserves it. Track Highlights

1. Shout2. Everybody Wants To Rule the World3. Head Over Heels/Broken4. The Working Hour

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album was remastered and re-issued on CD in 1999 with bonus tracks, including b-sides and remixes. Three of the tracks ("The Conflict", "The Marauders" and "Broken Revisited") are actually from the The Hurting period.

The album was re-released again in Deluxe Edition 2-disc format in 2006 with the full collection of b-sides and many alternate versions and remixes of the album's tracks.